Beyoncé Sacks the Super Bowl Halftime Show

It was difficult to imagine exactly how Beyoncé would insert herself into the Super Bowl halftime show after surprise-releasing the video for her new single, “Formation.” (If you haven’t watched it yet, now is the time.) The video is everything the halftime show historically has not been: politically charged, visually daring, sexy, confrontational, revelling in Southern black femininity. Here was Beyoncé, forcibly rejecting the milquetoast white center of popular culture before planning a visit to what has been, in many years, its main stage, as a guest of her friend Chris Martin. Would she provide a necessary disruption at the Super Bowl, or would she temper her message for America’s sake?

Beyoncé, of course, was able to do both. The show began on a messy, awkward foot, with Coldplay performing a limp medley in a blizzard of incoherent visual stimuli—neon digitalia, twirling Day-Glo umbrellas, bright flowers, and psychedelically patterned decorations meant to make reference to some combination of Woodstock and contemporary E.D.M. festivals. (Contrast this with Beyoncé’s “Formation” video and its abundance of rich, meticulously deployed imagery.) Coldplay’s performance was so tepid, so anonymous, so comically white, that the actress Taraji P. Henson mistook the band for Maroon 5 in the caption of an Instagram post. How Beyoncé would drop into the scene—in the Bay Area’s broad daylight—became an even more urgent question.

Cue Bruno Mars, the mediator and palate cleanser of the evening. After performing at the Super Bowl in 2014, Mars (like Coldplay and Beyoncé) is now a veteran of the halftime show. He appeared at the tail end of Coldplay’s medley in an oversized black-patent-leather sweatsuit, flanked by an all-male crew of dancers. They danced acrobatically to “Uptown Funk” and gave the show the ultra-fast injection of swagger and attitude that it needed to prepare for Beyoncé’s arrival. Down on the field, Beyoncé and her all-female crew of a few dozen backup dancers got right to the point with the chorus of “Formation”: “O.K., ladies, now let’s get in formation.” Beyoncé, who was dressed in a dramatic black-leather bodysuit with militaristic, criss-crossing gold sashes (a tribute to Michael Jackson’s Super Bowl XXVII halftime show), performed her new song with a stunning vitality. Coldplay may have been the headliner, but this was always designed to be Beyoncé’s night. She did not dilute “Formation” like she could have, belting some of its most forceful lines with glee: “My daddy Alabama / Mama Louisiana / You mix that Negro with that Creole, make a Texas BAMA!”

And yet the performance didn’t feel purely like an act of subversion. Part of Beyoncé’s gift—and what has been necessary for her total dominance in the mainstream—is her ability to float provocative themes on giant platforms while retaining her megawatt star-power appeal. This is a political song, yes. Beyoncé’s backup dancers were sporting outfits that made reference to the Black Panthers. But it was performed with such showmanship that I’m sure many American halftime-show viewers, those who were not paying obsessive attention to the “Formation” video, were none the wiser. They might have been more viscerally wowed by the sheer physicality and logistical complexity of Beyoncé’s dance routine, captivated by the song’s hook, or delighted by the cheeky dance-off between Beyoncé and Bruno Mars once the song was finished. (Or floored by the way she recovered from a tiny stumble she took onstage during a particularly challenging dance sequence.) Or they might have just been unaware of the overarching symbolism.

Taken out of the context of its video, “Formation” is still a powerful political statement, but it’s also an extremely catchy single, a mastery of the cool and vicious rap sound that Beyoncé developed on her song “7/11.” The Super Bowl made it abundantly clear that this is a song we’re going to be hearing quite a bit, in many different contexts, absorbing its many messages from a different angle each time. You will hear it at sports games, in nightclubs, at the gym, booming from car stereos, in your headphones, and at political rallies. And, if you can afford tickets, you will see it—as Beyoncé announced so slyly after the halftime show wrapped—performed live again during her forthcoming and aptly named Formation world tour.

Carrie Battan is a contributing writer for newyorker.com. She has contributed to the New York Times, New York Magazine, GQ, Rolling Stone, and the Web site Pitchfork, where she worked as a staff writer from 2011 to 2014.